Our Work

With rigorous economic research and practical policy solutions, we focus on the issues and institutions that are critical to global development. Explore our core themes and topics to learn more about our work.

Search By

Commentary & Analysis

In timely and incisive analysis, our experts parse the latest development news and devise practical solutions to new and emerging challenges. Our events convene the top thinkers and doers in global development.

One of the few bright spots in the climate negotiations was the news that the governance of climate funding has received some attention in the run-up to the Pittsburgh G-20. Much needs to be settled, but at least the issue is on the table.

This is a joint posting with Kimberly Elliott and also appeared on the Huffington Post.

With one important reservation, we welcome last week’s EU proposal that the upcoming Pittsburgh G-20 Summit “should adopt the “Everything But Arms” (EBA) initiative without delay to support people in developing countries suffering from the crisis.” The EBA nominally provides 100 percent duty-free, quota-free market access for exports from least-developed countries, so suggesting that the rest of the G-20 replicate it is clearly in line with a Sept. 2 letter sent by members of the CGD Global Trade Preference Reform Working Group. The letter called upon:

Uri Dadush at the Carnegie Endowment provides an excellent reader-friendly summary of the agenda and issues the G-20 leaders will face in Pittsburgh this week. His fourth of four challenges is for the leaders to develop a long-term agenda – and a long-term agenda implies ipso facto a development agenda.

CGD recently posted my working paper, The Illusion of Equality, co-authored by Martina Viarengo. The motivations behind the paper go back to when I was a kid. When people were coming to our house, my mother would put us five children to work trying to clean up because “company” was coming. And when company was there, we were put on our best behavior (or out of sight).

I am pleased to announce that CGD has expanded its work in monitoring U.S. foreign assistance. Sheila Herrling, whom many of you know from her wonderful stewardship of our MCA Monitor, has been named Director, Monitoring Foreign Assistance Program and will be managing our Rethinking U.S. Foreign Assistance Program, a one-stop shop for information, dialogue and analysis on the progress and challenges in modernizing U.S. foreign assistance.

Leaders of the world’s richest nations have repeatedly pledged to offer the world’s poorest countries duty-free, quota-free (DFQF) access to their markets. Such access is one of the most powerful tools that high-income countries have to help poor countries to help themselves. The upcoming G-20 summit in Pittsburgh is an opportunity for the world’s leaders to finally deliver on this promise.

Narratives matter. Not just for creating and sustaining nationhood as Isaiah Berlin famously argued. They also matter critically in international negotiations. At the moment, India is not winning the battle of the narrative on climate change. And that's a worry.